In many areas of technology bearings are used that can assume different forms depending on the field of use. For example, there are axial bearings that can prevent movement in the axial direction of a to-be-rotatably-supported component, radial bearings that can prevent a movement of a component in the radial direction, or also bearings that can accommodate combined axial and radial loads. The latter can be mounted pair- or group-wise with further bearings of the same type on a common shaft, for example in order to reduce or even eliminate a clearance of the shaft. For this purpose a preloading can be undertaken by which the clearance is already reduced as much as possible in a rest state of an application. However, many applications, due to their size, can only allow very limited possibilities to undertake the preloading with acceptable effort, since, for example, bearings and shafts supported thereby can have masses of a plurality of tons, which significantly impedes handling. Furthermore, a required precision may possibly not be achieved here, since under certain circumstances even small temperature differences can lead to a non-negligible thermal expansion of bearing components, or there can be the possibility that due to the mass of the bearing which can be for example, over a ton, settlement due to the weight of the bearing or the shaft itself can occur. This can affect, for example, wind turbines, but also other applications wherein bearings are used starting from a predetermined minimum size or minimum mass.
It is therefore desirable to provide an improved concept for a preloading of a bearing.